I woke up with a jump and try to confirm my environment. The sight of the almost empty room confirms that it was just a dream. It's not the first time that I dreamed about that town, usually, I treat such dreams like another episode of an anime. But a patient shirt sticking to my skin from perspiration is a sign that something went wrong.

I stand up from my new bed and go to the washbasin, turn the valve and put my head under a stream of cold water to cool down.

Yeah, Mabase... Fictional Japanese city with the giant Medical Mecanica building shaped like an iron. Except that it's a perfectly ordinary town with schools, businesses, and neighborhoods. Also, there is a large river running through the town, spanned by several bridges. Oh, I shouldn't forget to mention a garbage dump and slums.

Well, the main reason why my dream takes a toll on my mind is not the location but the people, which happened to be there - Eri, Mamimi, commander Amarao, Haruko Haruhara...

I feel like my brain screams in pain caused by the cold, so I turn off the water and go to the window. Behind the steel bars of my "luxurious" room, there is an inner yard without anything but benches with groups of soldiers and medical workers sitting on them and smoking cigarettes. The early morning sun, slowly rising in the sky informs all of us about the beginning of the new day.

Still, my mind is occupied by Haruko. If there could exist a woman which I could call a soulmate it would be her. That's until I possessed the body of Naoto in my dream. She lives her life like a boss, and I respect her for that. Until she runs me over with her Vespa. Or until she hit my head with a guitar.

Usually, such a strike results in a conclusion, but that's a dream, moreover based on the psychedelic work of Gainax... So I've got a bump, and my bump became a horn. Which medical treatment is prescribed in such cases? Band-aid. Everything is logical, isn't it?

I could mention how she masqueraded as a teacher in "my" school, conveniently destroying naive thoughts of students about life, or how she diagnosed me with Flictonic Clippe Webber Syndrome or gave me CPR with a tongue.

An amazing dream isn't it? Well, that's until my bump finally matured and brought to that world Him. A being with a TV as his head. And he wasn't Canti whom everyone could expect to appear, but damned Retro. Retro, genetically modified ex-prisoner on the run with the behavior of a yakuza and skills of a ninja.

Nor "me", nor Haruko was happy to meet him, Retro shared our feelings. That's when shit hit the fan. As he said, his pregnant Panda was waiting for him so we should send him back. And that was exactly what we didn't have any means to do. So that pandafucker came to a logical decision to go back through the way which he came from. Yep, through my head. "Me" and Haruko strongly disagreed with that. My reason was that my head won't fit him in, and Haru-san said that the only being possessing Taro-kun's head should be her. So the fight commenced.

First Class Space Patrol Officer versus TV-head. Bassguitar versus semi-machine guns. 

Who had won? Medical Mecanica of course. In the end, there was no more "me", or Haruko, or Amarao and his thickest brows in the whole universe. Everything and everyone became victims of Atomsk. Except an iron-shaped building flying in space.

We didn't have a chance to die for love, did we, Haruko?

Why am I so often dreaming of myself as Naoto, is it because of cat ears?

With this rhetorical question, I throw this whole situation to the back of my mind and try to solve the problem on my hands - my wet shirt.

As my late grandma once said, wet clothes are a direct way to fall with cold. So, with no spare shirt at hand, I pull off my current one and wave it above my head in a circle, so it could dry faster.

*wooosh*, *wooosh*, *wooosh*...

I'm a helicopter.

*wooosh*, *wooosh*, *wooosh*...

My drying session was interrupted by a soldier, who opened the door of my room without knocking.

We look at each other for some time without uttering a word. Me, half-naked, with an almost dry shirt flying around, and a soldier, with his twitching eyebrow as the only expression of human emotions on his face.

"Should I scream Kyaaa?! Or you will close that door from outside by yourself?"

"Stop fooling around. You have five minutes for your morning routine. Then we will go to get breakfast and after that, you will attend additional medical check-ups."

With such words, he closed the door.

"So be it". I mutter and get myself ready for the new day.